Street backs England Women to make further progress

Street backs England Women to make further progress

England's only loss came to Grand Slam winners France in this year's Six Nations

Inpho

England Women's head coach Gary Street insists his side cannot rest on their laurels after sealing second place in this year's Six Nations with a 24-0 victory in Italy.

France swept all before them to claim the Grand Slam with a final win against Ireland on Friday, leaving England clear to nail down the runners-up spot.

And they did so in impressive style on Sunday, shutting out the Azzurri and racking up four tries in the process.

It heralds an improvement on last year's third place but Street has challenged his charges to make further progress ahead of a busy summer.

"I was really pleased with our defence, nilling Italy, and also scoring a couple of cracking tries, but as a coach I am never happy and we want to keep moving forward," he said.

"One of the big things is that we have got to work harder on the refereeing interpretation of the breakdown.

"It is quite different to the way we have been coaching and we need to resolve that. We also lacked execution at times but Italy is a difficult place to come and play and past results for teams like France and Ireland have underlined that.

"We obviously wanted to win the Six Nations but the primary goal is the World Cup this season.

"What the Six Nations has allowed us to do is play nearly all of the World Cup squad, try out several different combinations and that is going to stand us in good stead in five months' time."